Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Team-up Week! Tuesday Team-ups: "The Night of the Shadow!" by O'Neil, Novick, and Giordano

Team-up Week continues! Here ya go, Groove-ophiles! Way back in January (you can read it here) we rapped about the very first team-up between The Batman and his inspiration, The Shadow! Well, the foremost creatures of the night got it all together again in Batman #259 (August 1974), once more courtesy Denny O'Neil, Irv Novick, and Dick Giordano. Not only do we get a cracking good mystery, but we even get the dirt on how The Shadow deeply influenced a young Bruce Wayne! Interested? Then here ya go, baby!

6 comments:

Beautiful! Irv Novick gets little credit relatively speaking, but his Batman was a favorite, a lithe and lean rendition which packed the drama of the Adams update with the sure-footed storytelling chops of the Infantino revitalization. His Shadow, if anything, is even better though I notice he drew him fewer times in this story than I remember.

You have NO IDEA how you've made my day. DC shots at the Shadow during the 70s (along with old time radio reruns popular then) sparked a love for the Shadow that has never faded. Many thanks -- and, though I know this will be heresy here -- I've always thought the Shadow more interesting, more believable than the Batman.

I never felt that Irv Novick was a good fit for the Batman; particularly as he was being reestablished in his creature of the night persona around this time. This was especially made obvious whenever Neal Adams would display his mastery of the caped crusader in the stories he did that bracketed Mr. Novick's. Irv put in many years of solid storytelling for DC, but was unable to capture the moodiness the Batman required (although Dick Giordano's inks helped considerably).

Where's the other 80 pages? Hah! just kidding. Love the 100 Page comics. I have about 2 or 3 The Shadow DC comics from I believe '73. Kaluta did the art but forget if it was just the covers or the inside. Great team-up.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Great followup to the first meeting between the Shadow and the Batman. In some ways, the Shadow was the precursor to the Batman, so this teamup makes sense. Would love to see another tale with these two Avengers of the Night!

LinkWithin

Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.

All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.

As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!